Received: 19 July 2020 Revised: 12 August 2021 Accepted: 13 August 2021

DOI: 10.1002/job.2558

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Feeling anxious and abusing low performers: A multilevel

model of high performance work systems and abusive
supervision

Meng Xi1 | Wei He1 | Ryan Fehr2 | Shuming Zhao1

1
School of Business, Nanjing University,
Nanjing, China Summary
2
Foster School of Business, University of In the present research, we identify high performance work systems (HPWSs) as an
Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
important yet unexamined driver of abusive supervision. Drawing from the theory of
Correspondence workplace anxiety, we specifically propose that HPWSs increase leader anxiety,
Shuming Zhao, School of Business, Nanjing
especially when the leader's job experience is relatively low. Then, we argue that this
University, Nanjing, China.
Email: zhaosm@nju.edu.cn anxiety ultimately causes leaders to abuse their employees in response, especially
when those employees are poor performers. We tested our hypotheses in a field
Funding information
National Natural Science Foundation of China, study (Study 1) using multiwave, multisource, multilevel data collected from
Grant/Award Numbers: 71832007, 71822203,
508 employees nested in 81 departments across 24 organizations in China and in a
71802106
sample of US managers (Study 2) that also examined alternative explanations for our
effects. Taken together, our findings offer new insight into the cross-level drivers of
abusive supervision and highlight the critical role of emotion in the link between
human resource (HR) systems and leader behavior.

KEYWORDS
abusive supervision, high performance work systems, job experience, job performance,
workplace anxiety

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N Although our knowledge of the factors that drive leaders'

For the past 20 years, leadership scholars have shown an increasing
interest in abusive supervision, defined as “subordinates' perceptions
of the extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display of
hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact”
(Tepper, 2000, p. 178). Abundant empirical evidence has shown that
abusive supervision has lasting negative effects on employees and
their organizations (Mackey et al., 2017; Martinko et al., 2013;
Tepper, 2007). Therefore, to better understand why leaders behave
abusively toward their followers, research on the antecedents of
abusive supervision has proliferated (Zhang & Bednall, 2016). For
example, the literature suggests that leaders engage in abusive super-
vision as a form of displaced aggression (D. Liu et al., 2012; Mawritz
et al., 2012), to penalize employees' poor performance or deviant
behaviors (Lian et al., 2014; Tepper et al., 2011), or because they are
depleted (Barnes et al., 2015).
abusive supervision is accumulating, the literature on contextual,
organizational-level pressures that drive abusive supervision is consid-
erably less developed and focuses largely on unethical organizational
norms (Mawritz, Dust, & Resick, 2014; Restubog et al., 2011) and
unfair organizational policies (Tepper et al., 2006). A deeper
understanding of the contextual, multilevel antecedents of abusive
supervision is particularly important moving forward (Mawritz,
Folger, & Latham, 2014). Knowledge of such factors can facilitate a
more thorough understanding of levers that might discourage abusive
behavior, allowing organizations to function more effectively (Tepper
et al., 2017; Zhang & Bednall, 2016).
In this research, we focus on the role of organizations' human
resource (HR) practices in increasing abusive supervision. Specifically,
we focus on high performance work systems (HPWSs). Briefly
defined, HPWSs are bundles of HR practices designed to
improve organizational outcomes by targeting employees' abilities,

J Organ Behav. 2022;43:91–111. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job © 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 91
92
motivations, and opportunities in what has come to be referred to as
the AMO framework (Jiang et al., 2012). Whereas research broadly
confirms the efficacy of HPWSs in improving organizational perfor-
mance (Becker & Gerhart, 1996; Jiang et al., 2015), scholars have
recently emphasized the importance of adopting a more nuanced view
to better understand the effects of HPWSs on different employee
subgroups (Wright & Boswell, 2002), the mechanisms through which
HPWSs exert their effects (Messersmith et al., 2011), and the condi-
tions under which HPWSs are more versus less effective (Jiang
et al., 2015). Drawing from the theory of workplace anxiety (TWA)
(Cheng & McCarthy, 2018), we posit that HPWSs increase the job
demands placed on frontline leaders, producing anxieties that are
particularly pronounced among less experienced leaders. Looking
downstream, we propose that this anxiety causes leaders to abuse
their employees, especially those they perceive to be poor
performers.
Figure 1 presents our overall conceptual model. In total, we make
several interrelated contributions to the literatures on abusive
supervision and HPWSs. First, our work contributes to the abusive
supervision literature by responding to calls for deeper explorations
of its multilevel, contextual determinants (Mawritz, Folger, &
Latham, 2014; Tepper et al., 2017). In addition to identifying HPWSs
as one such contextual determinant, we further demonstrate that the
contextual influences of organizations' HPWSs on abusive supervision
are influenced by leader job experience, underscoring the importance
of adopting a person-context interactionist perspective for under-
standing abusive supervision. Second, we contribute to the abusive
supervision literature by demonstrating the proximal impact of anxiety
and the moderating role of employee job performance. We deepen
scholars' understanding of the major theoretical perspectives on abu-
sive supervision (Tepper et al., 2017). Specifically, our research offers
an integrative framework that unravels the process through which
leader, employee, and contextual factors jointly determine abusive
supervision. Finally, we advance understanding of the individual-level
consequences of HPWSs by demonstrating that HPWSs can make
frontline leaders anxious, leading them to abuse their low-performing
employees (e.g., Godard, 2001; Jensen et al., 2013). These findings
dovetail with a growing literature on the impact of anxiety in the
workplace (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018).
XI ET AL.
2 | THEORY AND HYPOTHESES
2.1 | HPWSs and leader anxiety
For many decades, scholars have explored how organizations can
achieve their goals through the design and implementation of a wide
range of HR practices, from structured selection systems and tailored
training programs to novel compensation arrangements and feedback
systems (e.g., Arthur, 1994; Batt, 2002; Guthrie, 2001; Huselid, 1995).
As the field evolved, scholars began to emphasize a more
strategic approach, wherein organizations adopt constellations of
strategically aligned HR practices, often referred to as HR bundles
(MacDuffie, 1995). Within this literature, one strategic approach to
HR that has drawn attention is the notion of HPWSs, defined as “a
group of separate but interconnected human resource (HR) practices
designed to enhance employees' skills and effort” (Takeuchi
et al., 2007, p. 1069).
Research to date has largely supported the hypothesis that
HPWSs have a positive impact on organizations and their employees.
At the organizational level, scholars have linked HPWSs to outcomes
including organizational productivity, profitability, innovation, and
overall performance (Combs et al., 2006; Delaney & Huselid, 1996;
Jiang et al., 2012; Subramony, 2009). At the employee level, scholars
have demonstrated that HPWSs positively impact employees' job sat-
isfaction, commitment, empowerment, organizational citizenship, and
relational coordination (Liao et al., 2009; Messersmith et al., 2011;
Takeuchi et al., 2009). Although the mainstream HPWSs literature
focuses on HPWSs' beneficial consequences for both organizations
and employees, scholars have rarely focused on frontline leaders'
reactions to HPWSs (Kehoe & Han, 2020). Leaders play a pivotal role
in ensuring the effectiveness of HPWS implementation (Gilbert
et al., 2011; Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007). However, leaders might
have a particularly difficult time adjusting to HPWSs, due in part to
the demands those systems place upon leaders' time. Given these
challenges, we posit that HPWSs will have a particularly problematic
impact on leaders' workplace anxiety.
According to the TWA, workplace anxiety can be defined as
“feelings of nervousness, uneasiness, and tension” in relation to one's
work (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018, p. 537; McCarthy et al., 2016).
FIGURE 1 The theoretical framework
XI ET AL.
Unlike general trait anxiety, workplace anxiety occurs in intermediate
terrain, akin to test anxiety (Spielberger et al., 1976) or athletic perfor-
mance anxiety (Martens et al., 1990). Moreover, workplace anxiety is
usually conceptualized at two different levels: as either a transient
state or a more global assessment of one's work (Cheng &
McCarthy, 2018). The former is referred to as situational workplace
anxiety and is determined by factors that fluctuate frequently, such as
daily levels of conflict with one's manager or subordinates. The latter
is referred to as dispositional workplace anxiety and is determined by
more static factors such as core self-evaluations (Cheng &
McCarthy, 2018).
Whereas dispositional workplace anxiety is typically examined
between individuals, situational anxiety is typically examined within
individuals. Furthermore, dispositional workplace anxiety and
situational workplace anxiety have reciprocal influences on each
other. Employees with high dispositional anxiety are more sensitive to
situational stressors and thus more prone to experiencing situational
anxiety. In turn, the accumulation of experienced situational anxiety
can give rise to dispositional anxiety (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018). In
this paper, we focus on between-individual differences in dispositional
workplace anxiety as a function of the HPWSs (or lack thereof) in
leaders' organizations.
Drawing from the TWA, we argue that HPWSs are likely to be a
source of anxiety for frontline leaders for two interrelated reasons.
First and most directly, HPWSs place a significant burden on frontline
leaders, requiring them to dedicate energy in the enactment and
implementation of new programs against a backdrop of significant
performance pressure (Huselid & Becker, 2011). Indeed, although
HPWSs are typically discussed in contrast to more control-orientated
systems (Truss et al., 1997), the systems inevitably require significant
effort to enact. For example, ability-enhancing programs such as con-
tinuous training require leaders to ensure that employees are actively
participating in those programs and are often coupled with formal skill
development plans that are again the leader's responsibility to follow
(Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007). Similarly, HPWSs aim to motivate
employees through programs such as individualized performance
appraisals and promotion systems that carefully track employees'
readiness for internal promotions (Hales, 2005). In terms of
opportunity-enhancing mechanisms, examples that implicate
increased managerial demands include the deployment and tracking
of employee satisfaction measurement systems and the development
of formal processes for employees to resolve conflict with coworkers
(Becker & Huselid, 1998).
Consistent with the notion that leaders play a critical role in the
implementation of HPWSs, Klaas et al. (2012) demonstrated that
the effectiveness of HPWSs hinges on the leader's relevant
knowledge, skills, and abilities (i.e., KSAOs), such as his or her commu-
nication and problem-solving skills. Similarly, research has shown that
leaders' competencies in enacting HPWSs directly impact the extent
to which employees react positively to those systems (Arthur
et al., 2016).
Second, we note that although HPWSs provide resources
intended to alleviate challenges and demands, the resources they
93
provide tend to be focused on employees (Wright & Boswell, 2002),
not leaders. For example, HPWSs emphasize training of newcomers,
feedback from leaders, and participation in decision-making (Becker &
Huselid, 1998) but rarely explicitly discuss leader-focused training,
motivational mechanisms, or opportunities for further advancement.
Thus, for example, leaders often lack support in developing the skills
necessary to effectively implement HPWSs (Klaas et al., 2012) and
rarely receive training that is uniquely relevant to their needs, such as
the need for training on aligning their behavior with corporate strat-
egy (Huselid & Becker, 2011).
In sum, HPWSs increase frontline leaders' performance pressures,
while creating new demands on their managerial work without provid-
ing concomitant resources. Consistent with the TWA and related the-
ories of affective responses to organizational events (Weiss &
Cropanzano, 1996) and anxiety as a strain response (D. Katz &
Kahn, 1978), these arguments suggest that HPWSs will be seen as
diffuse threats by frontline leaders, making leaders feel anxious at
work (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018). Similarly, Mawritz, Folger, and
Latham (2014) found that supervisors' exceedingly difficult goals posi-
tively predict the development of hindrance stress, which in turn
increases their anger and anxiety. We thus offer the following
hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1. HPWSs will be positively related to
leaders' workplace anxiety.
2.2 | The moderating role of leader job experience
Job experience is regarded as a vital personal factor affecting disposi-
tional anxiety, such that more experienced employees may have lower
levels of dispositional workplace anxiety (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018;
Hunter & Thatcher, 2007; Motowidlo et al., 1986). In addition to this
main effect, we argue that as leader job experience increases, the pos-
itive effect of HPWSs on workplace anxiety might be weakened. As
previously reviewed, HPWSs are likely to provoke anxiety in part
because they place new demands on leaders' managerial work without
providing concomitant resources. More experienced leaders are less
likely to regard the implementation of HPWSs as a burden or a diffi-
cult goal than less experienced leaders because they are more likely to
have developed relevant skills from their prior managerial experiences
(e.g., skills in the deployment of employee training systems;
R. Katz, 1980). Moreover, experienced leaders are likely to be well
equipped to handle any interpersonal difficulties that arise among
employees while adapting to these new practices (McCall, 2004).
In contrast, less experienced frontline leaders faced with the
implementation of HPWSs are likely to have a more difficult time.
For these less experienced leaders, HPWSs introduce a need for
KSAOs that they are lacking. For example, less experienced frontline
leaders are less likely to be able to draw from relevant past experi-
ences in enacting new training and performance appraisal systems.
Similarly, less experienced leaders are less likely to possess the tools
needed to help their employees cope with the stressors associated
94
with HPWSs. Simply put, a lack of experience limits the levers
available to a leader to impact employee performance through
HPWSs, accentuating leaders' nervousness, uneasiness, and tension
about their managerial work and performance goals. Consistent with
these ideas, Hunter and Thatcher (2007) demonstrated the role of
job experience in shaping the relationship between felt stress and job
performance, revealing that more experienced employees performed
more effectively under stress than less experienced employees. Thus,
we propose that beyond the direct effect of HPWSs on leader work-
place anxiety, workplace anxiety will be heightened when a frontline
leader's job experience is relatively low, leading to the following
hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2. Leader job experience moderates the
relationship between HPWSs and leaders' workplace
anxiety such that the relationship will be more positive
when leader job experience is relatively low than when
it is relatively high.
2.3 | Implications for abusive supervision
Having established the impact of HPWSs on leader anxiety and the
conditions under which this effect is most likely to emerge, we turn
next to the question of how leaders' anxieties are transformed into
abusive supervisory behaviors. Abusive supervision refers to a leader's
“sustained display of hostile verbal and non-verbal behaviors, exclud-
ing physical contact” (Tepper, 2000, p. 178) toward his or her
employees. Over the past 20 years, scholars have linked abusive
supervision to a wide range of negative outcomes. For instance,
abusive supervision has been shown to negatively impact employee
attitudes (Breaux et al., 2008), well-being (Lian et al., 2012), and
performance (Tepper et al., 2011), with meta-analytic evidence
robustly supporting abusive supervision's negative effects (Mackey
et al., 2017; Schyns & Schilling, 2013).
The notion that leaders' workplace anxiety will increase their ten-
dency to abuse their employees is consistent with two intersecting
streams of research in the abusive supervision literature. First, the
anxiety–abusive supervision link is consistent with the self-control
model of abusive supervision, which argues that leaders abuse their
employees in part because they are too depleted to reign in their abu-
sive behavior (e.g., due to stress, Burton et al., 2012; surface acting,
Yam et al., 2016; and a lack of sleep, Barnes et al., 2015). According to
the TWA (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018) and related anxiety research
(e.g., Kouchaki & Desai, 2015), anxiety signals the presence of a threat
in one's environment, although that threat is often vague and difficult
to pinpoint. To manage this anxiety, individuals engage in a range of
behavioral, psychological, and physiological responses (Mathews &
Macleod, 1985). When in an anxious state, individuals direct their
attention toward environmental threat cues. The brain's cognitive
resources shift toward protecting against threat. As a result, they tend
to focus on their own wishes while ignoring the needs of others
(Kouchaki & Desai, 2015).
XI ET AL.
Second, the theory of displaced aggression (Marcus-Newhall
et al., 2000) suggests that leaders abuse their employees to alleviate
their own negative experiences in the workplace, such as when being
abused (Mawritz et al., 2012) or treated unfairly (Hoobler & Hu, 2013)
by their own leaders, or when experiencing psychological contract
violations (Hoobler & Brass, 2006). Consistent with these streams of
abusive supervision research, feelings of anxiety, stress, and frustra-
tion have been consistently linked to abusive supervision (Hoobler &
Hu, 2013; Mawritz, Folger, & Latham, 2014). For example, Hoobler
and Hu (2013) used the leader's general negative affect to explain the
relationship between perceived interactional injustice and abusive
supervision. Similarly, Mawritz, Folger, and Latham (2014) showed
that exceedingly difficult goals spark abusive supervision by triggering
supervisors' feelings of stress and transient feelings of anger and
anxiety. Taken together, the evidence thus suggests an indirect effect,
whereby HPWSs increase frontline leaders' abusive supervision,
mediated by workplace anxiety.
Hypothesis 3. HPWSs exhibit an indirect effect on
abusive supervision as mediated by leader workplace
anxiety.
2.4 | The moderating role of employee job
performance
A central tenet of the victimization literature is that a victim's experi-
ence of mistreatment in the workplace is not only determined by the
aggressor's attributes and intentions but also induced by the victim's
own attributes and behaviors (Aquino & Thau, 2009). Drawing from
this victim-focused perspective, we argue that leaders are unlikely to
indiscriminately abuse their employees in the presence of anxiety-
inducing HPWSs. Instead, they are particularly likely to abuse their
lowest performing employees. From a self-control perspective, poor
performers present leaders with a relatively strong impetus for abuse.
Relative to their higher performing colleagues, poor performers devi-
ate from group norms by failing to meet expectations. Similarly, poor
performers are likely to be seen as a source of anxiety themselves,
thus spurring a need to exercise self-control to not abuse them.
The idea that poor performers will bear the brunt of abuse in
organizations with HPWSs is also supported by the displaced
aggression perspective on abusive supervision. According to this
perspective, leaders abuse or penalize poor performers in part to
restore justice inside their groups (Skarlicki & Kulik, 2004). Moreover,
leaders abuse their employees because they believe that their abuse
will have a positive impact on their performance (Watkins
et al., 2019). In other words, leaders abuse low-performing employees
due to both justice and performance considerations. Indeed, prior
empirical studies on abusive supervision have provided supportive
evidence showing that leaders are particularly likely to abuse
employees who perform poorly (Tepper et al., 2011; Walter
et al., 2015) or make leaders feel anxious (Khan et al., 2018). There-
fore, we propose the following hypothesis:
XI ET AL.
Hypothesis 4. Employee job performance moderates
the relationship between leaders' workplace anxiety and
abusive supervision such that the relationship will be
more positive among employees with lower rather than
higher levels of job performance.
2.5 | Indirect relationship between HPWSs and
abusive supervision
Taken together, our hypotheses suggest a potentially unsettling chain
of effects. Top-level leaders, seeking to improve their employees' per-
formance, institute HPWSs in their organizations. However, especially
when leader job experience is relatively low, these HPWSs create sig-
nificant anxiety in less experienced frontline leaders, who worry about
increased performance pressures, demands, and their overall capabili-
ties and resources to achieve performance goals in the organization.
Consistent with the TWA framework, frontline leaders' workplace
anxieties ultimately become a detriment to their behavior. Due to the
depleting effects of their anxieties and their desires to alleviate
the diffuse sense of threat they are experiencing, they abuse their
employees with increasing frequency. These patterns of abuse are
particularly pronounced among the group's lowest performing
employees, suggesting a troublesome unintended impact of HPWSs
on the very employees those systems were meant to assist. Taken
together, our theorizing thus suggests a conditional indirect effect of
HPWSs on leader abusive supervision via workplace anxiety:
Hypothesis 5. HPWSs have a conditional, positive indi-
rect effect on abusive supervision via workplace anxiety,
such that the indirect effect is strongest when leader
job experience is low and employee job performance
is low.
3 | STUDY 1
3.1 | Participants and procedure
For this study, we employed a multiwave, multisource, and multilevel
research design, allowing us to examine how frontline leaders' anxi-
eties over HPWSs ultimately shape the extent to which employees
report that those leaders abuse them. Our target sample consisted of
manufacturing firms in the Zhenjiang Economic and Technological
Development Zone, an industrial center located in the Eastern
Chinese city of Zhenjiang. With the support of the development
zone's director, we randomly selected 10% of the total number of
firms in the region (N = 33) to participate in our research. Of these
33 firms, most were small and medium sized with less than 500
full-time employees (SMEs), private owned, and focused on
manufacturing. Following prior research (Collins & Smith, 2006; D. Liu
et al., 2017), each participating firm's HR director then randomly
selected four work departments to participate in our survey.
95
Data were collected across two waves, with a 3-month separation
between waves. At Time 1 (starting from May 2017), the HR directors
of the 33 participating organizations were asked to report on their
organizations' HPWSs. Additionally, 132 department leaders within
these firms were asked to complete the same measure of HPWSs
usage, as well as measures of their feelings of workplace anxiety and
job experience (operationalized as job tenure). A total of 127 of the
invited leaders completed this survey.
Based on the availability of the 33 participant organizations as
indicated by our development zone liaison, we implemented our Time
2 survey 3 months after the Time 1 data collection. All data collection
ended in October 2017. Due to reasons such as a reported lack of
available time and changes in department structure, 81 departments
from 24 of our Time 1 firms were able to complete the Time 2 survey,
for an organization-level response rate of 73% and a department-level
response rate of 64%. A series of t-tests indicated no significant dif-
ferences between respondents and non-respondents along any of our
Time 1 variables. With respect to the 24 surveyed firms, the majority
were public (58%) and focused on manufacturing (79%). The organiza-
tions were primarily SMEs (i.e., 100–500 employees) and have been in
business for an average of 17.92 (SD = 16.47) years. Of the 81 depart-
ments within these firms, 46.9% were focused on production and
operations, 19.8% on administration, 19.8% on research and develop-
ment, and 13.6% on sales and marketing. In terms of department size,
although nearly half of the departments had fewer than 8 employees,
the average department size in our sample was 26.83 (SD = 39.44)
due to some large departments with more than 120 employees. The
leaders were 63% male, with an average age in the range of 31–35.
As our Time 2 data collection required employee-rated data on
abusive supervision, we encouraged all department employees to
participate in our survey if the department size was less than eight.
For departments with more than eight employees, we randomly
selected eight employees from staff lists to participate in the survey.
Department leaders had no influence over the selection of these
employees but were asked to rate each selected employee's
performance. A total of 508 out of 712 invited employees completed
their surveys, resulting in a 71.3% employee-level response rate. On
average, we surveyed 6.27 employees from each department
(SD = 1.80) and 3.38 departments from each firm (SD = 0.65). These
employees were 52.9% male, with an average age in the range of
31–35, and an average of 3.61 years spent working for their current
leader (SD = 3.04).
3.2 | Measures
3.2.1 | High performance work systems
Data on our focal organizations' HPWSs were collected from each
firm's HR director as well as each department leader. Specifically, the
HR directors and department leaders were asked to evaluate
the firm's use of HPWSs by using 15 items adapted from the 16-item
scale developed by Fu et al. (2017). One item “What proportion of
96
your professional staff receive formal performance appraisals from
more than one source (i.e., from several individuals such as supervi-
sors, peers, etc.)?” was deleted because none of our sampled firms
employed a 360-degree performance evaluation system. Of the
remaining 15 items, one item “What proportion of your professional
staff are organized in self-directed work teams in performing a major
part of their work roles?” was modified by removing “self-directed”
because our sampled teams had formal team leaders and thus were
not self-directed. In addition, two items—“What proportion of your
professional staff receive structured mentoring, e.g., via articles?” and
“What proportion of your professional staff participate in Quality of
Work Life (QWL) programs, Quality Circles (QC) and/or labour-
management participation teams?”—that were not fully applicable to
the HR practices employed in our sampled firms were replaced with
two similar items (i.e., “Individuals in this job have clear career paths
within the organization” and “Employees are provided the opportu-
nity to suggest improvements in the way things are done”) from
Delery and Doty's (1996) scale. The full scale used in this study is pro-
vided in Appendix A. Whereas the original scale phrased each item as
a question, we phrased each item as a statement for clarity. We asked
the raters to indicate their agreement with each statement along a
7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree; HR-rated
α = .93; leader-rated α = .94). To be consistent with previous studies
(Fu et al., 2017; Liao et al., 2009; Sun et al., 2007; Zhong et al., 2016),
we conceptualized HPWSs as a coherent system and averaged scores
of all 15 items into a unidimensional variable.
3.2.2 | Leader workplace anxiety
Department leader workplace anxiety was measured using the eight-
item scale developed by McCarthy et al. (2016). Sample items were “I
worry that I will not be able to successfully manage the demands of
my job” and “I feel nervous and apprehensive about not being able to
meet performance targets” (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree;
α = .94).
3.2.3 | Leader job experience
Following Hunter and Thatcher (2007), we measured leader job expe-
rience as the leader's job tenure. Department leaders were asked to
report how many years and months they have been in their current
managerial position. Thus, leader job experience was measured as a
continuous variable (in years).
3.2.4 | Employee job performance
Department leaders were asked to provide individual
performance evaluations of their employees utilizing a previously vali-
dated forced distribution method, wherein each employee is com-
pared to others in the leader's department (Blume et al., 2009;
XI ET AL.
Giumetti et al., 2015). Employee performance was specifically rated
by the leader using one of the following six intervals: (1) lowest 25%,
(2) 75%–60%, (3) 60%–40%, (4) 40%–25%, (5) 25%–10%, and (6) top
10%.1 According to this measure, a higher rating denotes higher
performance.
3.2.5 | Abusive supervision
Employees reported on their leaders' abusive supervision utilizing the
10-item scale developed by Aryee et al. (2007), adapted from
Tepper's (2000) original 15-item scale. Sample items were “My
department leader tells me that I am an incompetent employee” and
“My department leader tells me that my thoughts or feelings are stu-
pid” (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree; α = .95).
3.2.6 | Control variables
At the employee level, we controlled for employees' age (Zhang &
Bednall, 2016), gender (Haggard et al., 2011), education level (Xu
et al., 2012), and tenure with the leader (Hoobler & Brass, 2006;
Zhang & Bednall, 2016), as these variables have been shown to corre-
late with employees' perceptions of abusive supervision. At the
department level, we controlled for leaders' gender (Tepper
et al., 2006) and education level (Hoobler & Hu, 2013; Zhang &
Bednall, 2016), which have been found to impact leaders' anxiety or
tendency to engage in abusive supervision (Cheng &
McCarthy, 2018). At the firm level, we controlled for ownership struc-
ture (“1” = private, “0” = others), industry (“1” = manufacturing,
“0” = “others”), firm size (“1” = SMEs, “0” = large-sized enterprises),
and years since the company was founded to rule out the possible
influences of these firm-level attributes on leaders' anxiety or
employees' perceptions of leaders' abusive supervision (Martinko
et al., 2013; Tepper, 2007).2
3.3 | Analytic approach
We utilized hierarchical linear modeling (HLM; Bryk &
Raudenbush, 1992) to test our research hypotheses while accounting
for the nested structure of our data (employees nested in depart-
ments nested in organizations). To test Hypotheses 1 and 2, we ran a
group of two-level HLM regressions (HLM2) predicting leader work-
place anxiety. The data were separated across two levels: the depart-
ment level (Level 1) and the organizational level (Level 2). We first
entered leaders' gender and education as Level 1 controls and firm
ownership, industry, size, and age (grand-mean centering, Hofmann &
Gavin, 1998) as Level 2 controls in regression Model 1. Then, we esti-
mated the main effect of firm HPWSs (grand-mean centering) on
leader anxiety in Model 2 and the interactive effects of firm HPWSs
and leader job experience (group-mean centering, Hofmann &
Gavin, 1998) in Model 3.
TABLE 1 Descriptive statistics and correlations among the variables in Study 1
XI ET AL.

Variables Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
1. Employee 0.53 0.50
gender
2. Employee age 4.22 1.48 .01
3. Employee 2.27 0.78 .12**
.34**
education
4. Tenure with 43.29 36.52
.09* .30**
.14**
leader
5. Leader gender 0.63 0.48 .24**
.09 .00 .01
* ** **
6. Leader 2.69 1.04 .10
.16 .25
.12** .13**
education
7. Firm 0.44 0.50
.07
.11* .02
.08 .01 .12**
ownership
8. Firm industry 0.79 0.41 .09* .08
.01 .15**
.09*
.24**
.48**
9. Firm size 0.59 0.49
.02
.09
.06
.04 .26** .02 .14**
.43**
** **
10. Firm age 17.51 16.81 .06 .17 .03
.09 .02
.19 .00 .32**
.30**
11. HR-rated 5.62 0.82 .03
.12** .06
.21** .05 .04 .14**
.02 .06 .09
HPWSs
12. Leader-rated 5.15 0.94
.01
.06
.02
.10* .13** .02 .12**
.15** .20** .03 .32**
HPWSs
13. Leader 4.88 1.26 .15**
.03 .03
.12** .22** .00 .04
.16** .21** .14** .25** .35**
workplace
anxiety
14. Leader job 4.72 4.51
.14** .09
.05 .36**
.12**
.07 .01 .16** .10*
.06
.08 .21**
.24**
experience
15. Employee 3.56 1.58 .08
.07 .11*
.06 .05
.03
.05 .04
.02 .15**
.02
.05 .08 .02
job
performance
16. Employee 5.44 1.15
.07
.02 .04 .01
.04
.09*
.00 .02 .09*
.02 .12** .06 .03 .14** .05
job autonomy
17. Perceived 2.08 1.17 .11* .04
.05
.02 .08
.00
.09 .10*
.12** .07 .04 .09* .13**
.18**
.10*
.21**
abusive
supervision
18. Employee 5.13 1.29
.00
.08
.01
.08 .03 .03 .01
.12** .13**
.18** .18** .12** .01 .09*
.03 .46**
.10*
job
satisfaction

Note: N = 508 at the individual level, N = 81 at the department level, and N = 24 at the firm level; department- and firm-level variables were de-aggregated to provide estimates of means, standard deviations,
and correlations at the individual level. Gender: 1 = male, 0 = female; firm ownership: 1 = private firm, 0 = others; firm industry: 1 = manufacturing, 0 = others; firm size: 1 = small- and medium-sized
enterprises, 0 = others.
97

*p < .05. **p < .01.

98 XI ET AL.

To test Hypotheses 3 and 4, we ran a series of three-level HLM 3.4 | Results

regressions (HLM3) predicting employee perceived abusive supervi-
sion. The data were separated across three levels: the individual level
(Level 1), the department level (Level 2), and the organizational level
(Level 3). In regression Model 4, we entered employees' demographic
information, leaders' demographic information (group-mean centering),
and firm attributes (grand-mean centering) as controls. We also con-
trolled for the direct influences of firm HPWSs and leader job experi-
ence, and their interactive influences in this regression model. Then,
we estimated the main effect of leader workplace anxiety (grand-mean
centering) on abusive supervision in Model 5 and the interactive
effects of leader workplace anxiety and employee job performance
(group-mean centering, Hofmann & Gavin, 1998) in Model 6.
To test the cross-level moderated mediation model posited by
Hypothesis 5, we used the estimation of parameters obtained from
our HLM regressions to estimate a 95% confidence interval
(CI) around the conditional indirect effects by employing Tofighi and
MacKinnon's (2011) distribution-of-products method in
RMediation package. This procedure has been widely used in prior
research for testing indirect effects in multilevel models (e.g., Butts
et al., 2015; Fehr et al., 2017) because it can yield asymmetric CIs
around the observed indirect effect, which are thus applicable to the
skewed sampling distributions of indirect effects in multilevel models
(Preacher et al., 2010).
3.4.1 | Preliminary analysis
Before conducting our primary analyses, we first ran a null model
with our abusive supervision variable to make sure that meaningful
between-department variance existed. The results showed that
abusive supervision had significant between-department variance
(χ 2(57) = 178.38, p < .001; ICC1 = .24) indicating that HLM was
appropriate for testing our hypotheses.
Table 1 provides means, standard deviations, and correlations
for our focal variables. Consistent with our theorizing, leader
workplace anxiety was significantly correlated with both HR
director-rated HPWSs (r = .25, p < .01) and department leader-
rated HPWSs (r = .35, p < .01). Workplace anxiety was also
significantly related to employee perceived abusive supervision
(r = .13, p < .01). In addition, HR director-rated HPWSs were
the significantly and positively related to department leader-rated
HPWSs (r = .32, p < .01). To avoid common method variance
(Lindell & Whitney, 2001) and follow prior research (Chang
et al., 2014), we used HR director-rated HPWSs in our primary
analyses. We then tested the robustness of our empirical findings
by using the alternative, leader-rated HPWSs as the independent
variable.

TABLE 2 Results of hierarchical regression analysis for leader workplace anxiety and perceived abusive supervision in Study 1

Leader workplace anxiety Perceived abusive supervision

Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6

Control variables
Employee gender (L1) .29* .27* .26*
Employee age (L1) .01 .01 .01
Employee education (L1)
.07
.07
.07
Tenure duration (L1) .00 .00 .00
Leader gender (L2) .38 .37 .38 .14 .08 .08
Leader education (L2)
.01
.01
.03 .05 .05 .05
Firm ownership (L3)
.23
.31
.31
.10
.06
.06
Firm industry (L3)
.71
.70*
.71* .02 .11 .12
Firm size (L3) .31 .31 .30
.23
.29
.28
Firm age (L3) .02*** .02*** .02*** .00 .00 .00
Independent variables
Leader workplace anxiety (L2) .14* .14*
Employee job performance (L2)
.09***
Anxiety  Job performance (L2  L1)
.07***
Firm HPWSs (L3) .38*** .38*** .08 .03 .02
Leader job experience (L2)
.11*
.01 .00 .00
Firm HPWSs  Job experience (L3  L2)
.11** .00 .02 .02
Pseudo R2 .04 .10 .18 .03 .05 .07
Δ Pseudo R2 .04 .06 .08 .03 .02 .02

Note: N = 508 at the individual level (L1), N = 81 at the department level (L2), and N = 24 at the firm level (L3).
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
XI ET AL.
3.4.2 | Hypothesis testing
Table 2 shows the HLM2 regression results predicting leader work-
place anxiety. In Model 2, HPWSs positively and significantly
related to department leaders' workplace anxiety (γ = .38, p < .001),
explaining 6% of additional variance in workplace anxiety after
controlling for the influences of leaders' demographics and firm
characteristics. Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported. Results in
Model 3 showed that leader job experience interacted with
HPWSs to predict leader workplace anxiety (γ =
.11, p < .01),
explaining 8% of additional variance in leader workplace anxiety.
Following Preacher et al.'s (2006) recommendations, we conducted
simple slope analyses to further probe our findings. Results (see
Figure 2) revealed that the positive relationship between firm
HPWSs and leader workplace anxiety was stronger when leader
job experience was low (γ = .88, SE = .18, p < .001) than when it
was high (γ =
.13, SE = .21, n.s.). Thus, Hypothesis 2 was
supported.
Table 2 provides HLM3 regression results predicting employee
perceived abusive supervision. Results of Model 4 suggested that
none of the control variables, except for employee gender (γ = .29,
p < .05), were significantly related to employee perceived abusive
supervision. After controlling for these factors, leader workplace anxi-
ety was positively related to abusive supervision as shown in Model
5 (γ = .14, p < .05). Hypothesis 3 proposed a mediated relationship
between HPWSs and abusive supervision via leader workplace anxi-
ety. We estimated this indirect effect by employing a Monte Carlo
simulation with 20 000 replications to obtain the bias-corrected 95%
CI around this indirect relationship (Selig & Preacher, 2008). The
results suggested a non-significant indirect effect (indirect
effect = .05, 95% CI = [
.04, .15]). Thus, Hypothesis 3 was not
supported.
Hypothesis 4 proposed a moderating effect of employee job per-
formance on the relationship between leader workplace anxiety and
F I G U R E 2 The moderating effect of department leader job
experience in the relationship between firm HPWS and department
leader workplace anxiety (Study 1)
99
abusive supervision. Results in Model 6 of Table 2 showed that
employee job performance significantly moderated the relationship
between leader workplace anxiety and employee perceived
abusive supervision (γ =
.07, p < .001). Simple slope analyses
(Figure 3) showed that the positive relationship between leader
workplace anxiety and abusive supervision was stronger when
employee job performance was low (γ = .24, SE = .07, p < .001) than
when it was high (γ = .03, SE = .08, n.s.). Thus, Hypothesis 4 was
supported.
Hypothesis 5 proposed that the indirect effect of HPWSs
predicting abusive supervision via leader workplace anxiety is mod-
erated by leader job experience and job performance. To test these
conditional indirect effects, we multiplied the coefficients for the
simple slopes of HPWSs predicting leader workplace anxiety at
varying levels of leader job experience (from Model 3 of Table 2)
by the coefficients for the simple slopes of leader workplace anxi-
ety predicting abusive supervision (from Model 6 of Table 2) to
obtain estimates for the conditional indirect effects. As mentioned
above, a Monte Carlo simulation method with 20 000 replications
was employed to obtain the bias-corrected 95% CIs for these
conditional indirect effects and ascertain the differences
between them.
Table 3 presents the Monte Carlo CIs for these conditional indi-
rect effects. The results showed that the indirect effect of HPWSs
predicting abusive supervision via leader workplace anxiety was posi-
tive and significant when leader job experience was low and employee
job performance was low (indirect effect = .10, 95% CI = [.07, .41]).
However, the indirect effects under the condition of low job experi-
ence and high job performance (indirect effect = .03, 95% CI = [
.12,
.18]), under the condition of high job experience and low job perfor-
mance (indirect effect = .06, 95% CI = [
.14, .07]), and under the
condition of high job experience and high job performance (indirect
effect = .02, 95% CI = [
.05, .03]) were not significant. Thus,
Hypothesis 5 was supported.
F I G U R E 3 The moderating effect of employee job performance
in the relationship between department leader workplace anxiety and
employee-perceived abusive supervision (Study 1)
100
TABLE 3 Bootstrap estimation of Monte Carlo confidence intervals for conditional indirect effects in Study 1
Moderators
Leader job experience Employee job performance
Low (mean
SD) Low (1 SD below mean)
High (1 SD above mean)
High (mean + SD) Low (1 SD below mean)
High (1 SD above mean)
3.5 | Robustness check
To confirm the robustness of the above results, we used department
leader-rated HPWSs to test all proposed hypotheses. The regression
results can be found in Table A1. Results showed that the relationship
between leader-rated HPWSs and leader workplace anxiety was
positive and significant (γ = .35, p < .01), supporting Hypothesis 1. In
addition, leader job experience significantly moderated the positive
relationship between leader-rated HPWSs and leader workplace anxi-
ety (γ =
.28, p < .05), lending support to Hypothesis 2. Moreover,
leader workplace anxiety was positively related to abusive supervision
(γ = .13, p < .05), and employee job performance significantly moder-
ated this relationship (γ =
.07, p < .001). Thus, Hypothesis 4 was
supported. However, bootstrap results showed that the indirect rela-
tionship between leader-rated HPWSs and abusive supervision via
leader workplace anxiety was not significant (indirect effect = .05,
95% CI = [
.03, .14]). Again, Hypothesis 3 was not supported. Finally,
bootstrap analyses (Table A2) confirmed that this indirect relationship
was positive when leader job experience was low and job
performance was low (indirect effect = .12, 95% CI = [.06, .82]). The
indirect effects under other three conditions, however, were not sig-
nificant, supporting Hypothesis 5.
3.6 | Supplementary analyses
Although the primary purpose of our research is to examine the possi-
ble detrimental influences of HPWSs on leader behaviors, mainstream
research on HPWSs has widely demonstrated the positive impact of
HPWSs on employees. For instance, through opportunity-enhancing
programs, HPWSs have been found to positively impact employees'
job satisfaction (Den Hartog et al., 2013) in part due to their enhanced
perceptions of job autonomy (Dodd & Ganster, 1996). Thus, to pro-
vide a more balanced view of the consequences of HPWSs, we sought
to illustrate the positive effect of HPWSs on employee job satisfac-
tion (measured by three items; Takeuchi et al., 2009; α = .92) through
the mediating role of perceived job autonomy (measured by three
items; Hackman & Oldham, 1980; α = .87). Table A3 presents our
results, which suggest that HPWSs are positively related to employee
perceived job autonomy (γ = .19, p < .05) and job satisfaction
(γ = .28, p < .01). In addition, bootstrap analyses revealed that the
indirect relationship between firm HPWSs and employee job
XI ET AL.
Indirect effect (Firm HPWSs ! Leader workplace
anxiety ! Abusive supervision) 95% CI
.10 [.07, .41]
.03 [
.12, .18]
.06 [
.14, .07]
.02 [
.05, .03]
satisfaction via perceived job autonomy was positive and significant
(indirect effect = .12, 95% CI = [.05, .20]).
3.7 | Discussion
Study 1 largely supported our conceptual model, showing that
HPWSs impact abusive supervision through the mediating mechanism
of leader workplace anxiety when frontline leaders have low job expe-
rience and employees have low job performance. However, these
results should be interpreted with caution because we were unable to
rule out the potential influence of other stressors on leaders' work-
place anxiety (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018; Mawritz, Folger, &
Latham, 2014). In addition, the indirect effect of HPWSs on abusive
supervision through leader workplace anxiety was not supported
(Hypothesis 3), indicating the crucial moderating roles of leader job
experience and employee job performance examined in this research.
The purpose of Study 2 was to address these issues while also
replicating Study 1's findings in a Western cultural context.
4 | ST UDY 2
4.1 | Participant and procedure
We recruited 400 leaders in the United States from the online survey
platform Prolific from January 2021 to February 2021 (for recent
examples of using this platform for data collection, see Y. Liu &
Bakici, 2019; Palan & Schitter, 2018; Sherf & Morrison, 2020). We
constrained our sample to full-time, frontline leaders who currently
supervise employees. We implemented three waves of surveys with a
2-week interval between each time point. At the beginning of January
2021, the Time 1 (T1) survey was distributed. Here, we measured
leaders' organizations' HPWSs and leader demographic information.
To establish the unique impact of HPWSs, we also measured trait
neuroticism as a dispositional control and emotional labor and role
overload as contextual controls. A total of 396 out of the 400 leaders
completed and returned this T1 survey. Two weeks later, the Time
2 (T2) survey was distributed. This survey measured leaders' work-
place anxiety as well as their negative affect and depletion to test the
impact of anxiety above and beyond these other constructs. A total of
332 out of the 396 leaders completed and returned the T2 survey.
XI ET AL.
Finally, after another 2 weeks, the Time 3 (T3) survey was sent to
those who completed the T2 survey. This survey measured leaders'
abusive supervisory behaviors toward a recalled subordinate
(see Section 4.2 for detailed information). A total of 292 leaders com-
pleted the T3 survey. After screening out 16 duplicate responses at
T2 and 17 duplicate responses at T3, we retained 259 valid, matched
responses (Mage = 31–35 years; 66% male). The average job experi-
ence in current managerial positions was 3.39 years (SD = 2.97). Of
the 259 firms, 204 (78.8%) were private, and the majority (63.3%)
were small and medium sized with less than 500 employees.
4.2 | Measures
Because our sampled employees in this study were from the
United States, we used the original 16-item scale developed by Fu
et al. (2017) to measure HPWSs, assuming that the HR practices
described in this scale fit with the participants' work contexts.
Leaders' job experience and workplace anxiety were measured using
the same scales as in Study 1. The Cronbach's alpha for HPWSs and
leader workplace anxiety were .87 and .93, respectively. In the T3 sur-
vey, we first asked leaders to select the subordinate with whom they
have interacted most frequently recently and write down his or her
name. Then, leaders were asked to report their abusive supervisory
behaviors toward this recalled subordinate using the 15-item full scale
developed by Tepper (2000). The Cronbach's alpha for abusive super-
vision was .92 in this study. After reporting abusive supervision, par-
ticipants were asked to rate the recalled subordinate's in-role
performance using a five-item scale developed by Eisenberger
et al. (2010). A sample item was “This employee adequately completes
assigned duties” (1 = far below average; 7 = far above average;
α = .72).
As previously mentioned, we controlled for the influences of one
dispositional factor (leader trait neuroticism) and two contextual fac-
tors (leader emotional labor and role overload) on leader workplace
anxiety as emphasized in TWA (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018). Leader
trait neuroticism was measured with five items (α = .89,
Goldberg, 1999), emotional labor was measured with six items
(α = .83, Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002), and role overload was
measured with eight items (α = .89, Jensen et al., 2013). We also
controlled for the influences of leader negative affect (seven items,
α = .92, Diener & Emmons, 1984) and depletion (five items, α = .89,
Lanaj et al., 2014) on abusive supervision (Eissa & Lester, 2017; Lam
et al., 2017; Tepper et al., 2017; Zhang & Bednall, 2016).
4.3 | Results
4.3.1 | Preliminary analysis
Before conducting our primary analyses, we conducted a confirmatory
factor analysis to confirm the distinctiveness of HPWSs, workplace
anxiety, job performance, and abusive supervision. The results
101
showed a relatively good fit for the four-factor model (χ 2 = 1539.118,
df = 896, RSMEA = .05, CFI = .88, TLI = .88, SRMR = .06)
(Schumacker & Lomax, 1996).
Table 4 presents the descriptive statistics and correlations among
the focal variables in Study 2. Given that the data were collected at
the individual level, we employed Hayes's (2012) PROCESS macro for
SPSS to test our research hypotheses.3
4.3.2 | Hypothesis testing
As shown in Table 5, firm HPWSs positively predicted leader work-
place anxiety (γ = .20, p < .001, Model 2), explaining 4% of additional
variance in workplace anxiety and supporting Hypothesis 1. However,
the relationship between the interaction of firm HPWSs with leader
job experience and workplace anxiety was not significant (γ = .12, n.
s., Model 3). Thus, Hypothesis 2 was not supported.
Hypothesis 3 proposed a mediated relationship between HPWSs
and leader abusive behavior via leader workplace anxiety. We
employed bootstrap estimates and constructed a bias-corrected CI
(95%) from the PROCESS macro (Model 4) to test the indirect effect
(Hayes, 2012). The indirect effect of HPWSs on abusive supervision
through leader workplace anxiety was positive and significant (indirect
effect = .03, 95% CI = [.003, .07]), thus supporting Hypothesis 3.
According to Model 6 in Table 5, the interaction of leader work-
place anxiety and subordinate job performance was negatively related
to abusive supervision (γ =
.13, p < .05). Simple slope analyses (see
Figure 4) indicated that the relationship between leader workplace
anxiety and leader abusive behavior was stronger when subordinate
job performance was low (γ = .26, SE = .09, p < .01) than when it was
high (γ = .01, SE = .09, n.s.), supporting Hypothesis 4.
Hypothesis 5 proposed that the indirect effect of HPWSs
predicting abusive supervision via leader workplace anxiety was mod-
erated by leader job experience and subordinate job performance. We
once again employed Hayes's (2012) PROCESS macro (Model 29) for
SPSS to test this hypothesis and obtain bias-corrected bootstrapped
CIs (using 5000 bootstrap samples) for the conditional indirect effect
and obtain results for the index of moderated mediation. The results
are shown in Table 6. The index of moderated mediation
(Hayes, 2018) for the overall moderated mediation model was not
significant (index =
.01, 95% CI = [
.05, .001]), suggesting that the
mediation relationship between HPWSs and abusive supervision via
leader workplace anxiety was not significantly moderated by leader
job experience and employee job performance. More specifically, the
indirect effect of HPWSs predicting leader abusive behavior via leader
workplace anxiety was positive but non-significant under the
condition of low leader job experience and low subordinate job per-
formance (indirect effect = .02, 95% CI = [
.04, .09]). In contrast, this
indirect relationship was significantly positive when leader job experi-
ence was high and subordinate job performance was low (indirect
effect = .08, 95% CI = [.02, .17]). These conditional indirect relation-
ships were inconsistent with Hypothesis 5, which proposed that the
relationship between HPWSs and abusive supervision via leader
 102

TABLE 4 Descriptive statistics and correlations among the variables in Study 2

Variables Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
1. Leader male (T1) 0.66 0.50
2. Leader age (T1) 2.60 1.65
.07
3. Leader education (T1) 4.57 1.59
.14* .17**
4. Private firms (T1) 0.79 0.41 .11
.14*
.08
5. Service firms (T1) 0.32 0.47 .01 .10
.10
.05
6. Firm size (T1) 3.14 1.89 .00 .17** .14*
.28**
.03
* * **
7. Firm age (T1) 37.84 40.98
.10 .14 .15
.20 .04 .41**
8. Leader emotional labor (T1) 3.80 1.27
.16* .07
.03
.08 .07 .00 .15*
9. Leader role overload (T1) 4.00 1.26
.12 .07
.10
.04 .02
.06 .05 .42**
10. Leader trait neuroticism 3.64 1.47
.18**
.11 .04 .03 .04
.01 .03
.02 .03
(T1)
11. Leader negative affect (T2) 3.17 1.37
.01 .02 .05
.09 .01
.08 .06 .20** .32** .00
*
12. Leader depletion (T2) 2.97 1.02 .02
.05 .06
.05 .01
.08
.03 .13 .22** .00 .65**
13. Firm HPWSs (T1) 0.46 0.18 .03
.06 .12 .03
.05 .16* .18**
.06 .04 .04
.10
.09
**
14. Leader job experience (T1) 3.39 2.97 .03 .48
.08
.06 .08
.04 .02 .04 .09
.01 .09 .04
.16*
15. Leader workplace anxiety 4.05 1.35 .01 .04 .06
.10 .05
.01 .05 .16** .25**
.06 .41** .40** .15*
.12
(T2)
16. Employee job performance 4.89 0.97
.13* .03
.07
.02
.03 .11 .03 .10
.02
.02
.09
.05 .08
.05
.05
(T3)
17. Leader abusive behavior 1.78 0.79 .03 .05
.01 .03 .05
.06
.04 .12 .17**
.04 .22** .10 .06 .09 .20**
.18**
(T3)

Note: N = 259.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
XI ET AL.
XI ET AL. 103

TABLE 5 Results of regression analysis for leader workplace anxiety and leader abusive behavior in Study 2

Leader workplace anxiety (T2) Leader abusive behavior (T3)

Model Model Model Model Model Model Model Model Model

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1. Leader male (T1) .03 .02 .04 .04 .03 .00 .03 .03
.02
2. Leader age (T1) .01 .03 .13 .03 .04 .04 .05 .05 .02
3. Leader education (T1) .06 .04 .01 .01 .00
.01
.00
.01
.01
4. Private firms (T1)
.05
.07
.08 .07 .07 .06 .06 .07 .06
5. Service firms (T1) .04 .05 .04 .04 .03 .02 .04 .03 .03
6. Firm size (T1) .01
.02
.04
.01
.01
.01
.02
.02
.01
7. Firm age (T1) .01
.02
.01
.05
.05
.07
.07
.06
.09
8. Leader emotional labor (T1) .04 .05 .04 .06 .06 .09 .07 .06 .10
9. Leader role overload (T1) .13* .10 .10 .09 .08 .06 .08 .07 .04
10. Leader trait neuroticism (T1)
.07
.07
.06
.02
.01
.02
.02
.01
.02
11. Leader negative affect (T2) .22** .23** .25*** .23** .20* .19* .24** .21* .19*
12. Leader depletion (T2) .21** .23** .23**
.07
.10
.11
.06
.09
.11
13. Firm HPWSs (T1) .20*** .17** .09 .07 .10
14. Leader job experience (T1)
.18** .05
15. HPWSs * Leader job experience .12
.12
16. Leader workplace anxiety (T2) .14* .14* .13 .15*
17. Employee job performance (T3)
.16*
.17**
18. Anxiety * Employee job
.13*
.12*
performance
19. HPWSs * Employee job .04
performance
R2 .23 .27 .31 .08 .09 .14 .09 .10 .16
R2 change .23 .04 .04 .08 .01 .05 .01 .01 .06
F 6.02 12.02 7.15 1.69 4.17 6.24 2.12 3.13 2.40

Note: N = 259.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

workplace anxiety was most positive when leader job experience was
low and employee job performance was low. Thus, Hypothesis 5
was not supported.

4.4 | Supplementary analysis

In this study, Hypothesis 5 was not supported mainly because of

F I G U R E 4 The moderating effect of subordinate job performance
in the relationship between leader workplace anxiety and leader
abusive supervision (Study 2)
the non-significant moderating effect of leader job experience
(Hypothesis 2). For robustness, we conducted two sets of supplemen-
tary analyses.4 First, we removed role overload from the control
variables because role overload might be a consequence of HPWSs
according to our theorizing. The results were unaffected. Second, to
explore whether the moderating effect of employee job performance
was consistent with our prediction, we removed the first-stage mod-
erator of leader job experience from the analyses for testing the
moderated mediation relationship (i.e., Hypothesis 5). Results
suggested that the indirect relationship between HPWSs and abusive
supervision via leader workplace anxiety was more positive when
104
TABLE 6 Conditional indirect effect(s) of firm HPWSs on leader abusive behavior in Study 2
Moderators
Leader job experience Employee job performance
Low (M
SD) Low (M
SD)
High (M + SD)
High (M + SD) Low (M
SD)
High (M + SD)
employee job performance was low (indirect effect = .05, 95%
CI = [.01, .12]) than when it was high (indirect effect =
.004, 95%
CI = [
.05, .03]), providing partial support to Hypothesis 5. In addi-
tion, we ran the same analyses in Study 1 and obtained similar
results—the indirect relationship between HPWSs and abusive super-
vision via leader workplace anxiety was more positive when employee
job performance was low (indirect effect = .08, 95% CI = [.03, .16])
than when it was high (indirect effect = .03, 95% CI = [
.05, .07]).
5 | G E N E R A L D I S C U S SI O N
Although scholars' understanding of abusive supervision has increased
dramatically in recent years, research on how HR systems impact
abusive supervision remains limited (Tepper et al., 2017; Zhang &
Bednall, 2016). In this paper, we aimed to contribute to this literature
by focusing on the contextual impact of HPWSs on frontline leaders'
abusive behavior. Drawing from the TWA, we developed and tested a
multilevel model that identifies organizations' HPWSs as a vital con-
textual factor in leaders' abusive supervision, mediated by leaders'
increased workplace anxiety. Furthermore, we identified leaders' job
experience and employees' job performance as important moderators.
Empirical data collected from both China (Study 1) and the
United States (Study 2) provided support for our core theorizing.
Leaders reported higher levels of workplace anxiety in organizations
with HPWSs and thus engaged in increased abuse of their employees,
especially employees who were poor performers. However, the role
of leader experience in the link between HPWSs and anxiety remains
unclear. In the sections below, we discuss the theoretical and practical
implications of these findings, and several limitations and opportuni-
ties for future research.
5.1 | Theoretical implications
Looking first to the theoretical implications of our research, we focus
on our contributions to the literatures on abusive supervision,
workplace anxiety, and HPWSs. First, our research contributes to the
abusive supervision literature by responding to calls for a deeper
understanding of its multilevel, contextual determinants (e.g., Aryee
et al., 2007; Martinko et al., 2013; Mawritz, Folger, & Latham, 2014).
Although past research has begun to explore these multilevel factors,
it has largely relied on leaders' perceptions of aggressive
XI ET AL.
Indirect effect (Firm HPWSs ! Leader workplace
anxiety ! Leader abusive behavior) 95% CI
.02 [
.04, .09]
.001 [
.01, .03]
.08 [.02, .17]
.01 [
.04, .06]
organizational norms (Restubog et al., 2011), organizational injustice
(Aryee et al., 2007; Hoobler & Hu, 2013; Tepper et al., 2006), and
higher level managers' abusive supervisory behavior (Mawritz
et al., 2012). Mawritz, Folger, and Latham (2014) began to examine
the contextual predictors of abusive supervision and found that
exceedingly difficult goals positively affected abusive supervision by
triggering supervisors' feelings of stress and transient feelings of anger
and anxiety. Our research findings echo and extend Mawritz, Folger,
and Latham's (2014) work by demonstrating that HPWSs posed
salient contextual demands on frontline managers and led to work-
place anxiety, which, in turn, had downward implications for the abuse
of poor performers, offering evidence that organizations can facilitate
abusive supervision even while striving to follow best practices.
In addition to advancing scholars' understanding of the multilevel
determinants of abusive supervision, our research also deepens
scholars' understanding of how abusive supervision is shaped by
leader affect. Prior studies have demonstrated that abusive supervi-
sion is more likely to occur among leaders experiencing negative
affect (Hoobler & Hu, 2013), depression (Tepper et al., 2006), and dis-
crete emotions such as anger (Mawritz, Folger, & Latham, 2014). We
advance this line of work by providing new evidence for the impact of
leader workplace anxiety on abusive supervision and demonstrating
that these anxieties can be sparked by organizations' HR systems. Fur-
thermore, we advance this line of work by demonstrating that anxious
leaders tend to focus their abuse on poor performers. In this way, we
add nuance to scholars' understanding of both when and why leaders
abuse their employees, highlighting the importance of taking individ-
ual differences across employees into account when developing
models of abusive supervision.
Beyond our contributions to the abusive supervision literature,
our research contributes to the workplace anxiety literature in several
ways. First, we contribute to the TWA by demonstrating its applicabil-
ity to frontline leaders and, in particular, its utility in explaining
leaders' abusive supervision. Second, we contribute to the literature
by expanding the set of contextual demands shown to increase
workplace anxiety. Third, we contribute to anxiety research by
offering a person-in-context interactionist view of workplace anxiety.
Specifically, although job experience has been theorized to impact
workplace anxiety directly (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018), it can also
interact with contextual demands to influence workplace anxiety. In
Study 1, we found more experienced leaders (with longer job tenure)
less vulnerable to anxiety as a response to organizational demands
(HPWSs). However, this interaction effect was not replicated in Study
XI ET AL.
2, in part due to the significant main effect of leader job experience
on workplace anxiety and the relatively low standard deviation of
leader job experience in the sample recruited online. This non-
significant moderating effect may also be due to the lack of adequate
face-to-face communication between leaders and employees since we
collected data in Study 2 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further,
through comparing the slopes of the first-stage interaction effect, we
found unexperienced supervisors reported high levels of anxiety
regardless of the presence of HPWSs.
Finally, our research contributes to the HPWSs literature by
examining the unintended negative consequences of these systems.
As previously reviewed, research to date has emphasized the positive
effects of HPWSs on organizations (Combs et al., 2006;
Subramony, 2009; Takeuchi et al., 2007) and their employees
(e.g., Batt, 2002; Collins & Smith, 2006; D. Liu et al., 2017; Takeuchi
et al., 2007), relying on frameworks such as social exchange theory
and resource-based models of competitive advantage. The downsides
of these systems are, in contrast, much less examined. Leaders play a
pivotal role in ensuring the effectiveness of HPWS implementation
(Gilbert et al., 2011; Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007). However, leaders
might have a particularly difficult time adjusting to HPWSs, due in part
to the demands those systems place upon leaders' time. Consistent
with this perspective, we found that HPWSs increase leader anxiety
and abusive supervision, thus offering a more nuanced view of
HPWSs' effects and integrating the HPWS literature with the TWA
and associated individual-level affective processes.
5.2 | Practical implications
For organizations seeking to reduce the prevalence of abusive super-
vision, our research offers two key practical implications. First, our
research offers insight into how organizations might mitigate leaders'
abusive supervisory behaviors by paying attention to HPWSs'
unforeseen negative effects on leaders. In particular, we suggest that
organizations can mitigate HPWSs' negative effects by directly
attending to leaders' feelings of anxiety. Given that our research
showed leaders' anxieties to be particularly pronounced when leaders
are relatively new to their managerial positions, organizations are
encouraged to provide best practices workshops for new leader train-
ing, helping these less experienced leaders to deal with workplace
stressors in general and the contextual demands from HPWSs in
particular.
Given that leaders' anxieties are particularly detrimental in their
facilitation of abusive behavior toward low-performing employees,
organizations would also benefit from explicitly targeting leaders'
attitudes and behaviors. Organizations could offer leaders examples
of constructive alternatives to abuse, such as holding private one-
on-one meetings and developing performance improvement plans.
More broadly, organizations can build encouraging organizational
cultures and norms, such as a performance-enhancing culture,
where abusive supervision is discouraged through organization-
wide systems.
105
5.3 | Limitations and future research directions
Despite its strengths, our research has several limitations, which point
to important directions for future research. First, in our research, we
focused on workplace anxiety as the only mediator in the relationship
between HPWSs and abusive supervision. As previous research has
demonstrated, abusive supervision is impacted in part by leaders' role
overload, frustration, hindrance stress, anger, and depletion (Barnes
et al., 2015; Eissa & Lester, 2017; Mawritz, Folger, & Latham, 2014;
Yam et al., 2016). Although we controlled for leaders' general negative
affect and depletion in testing the effect of workplace anxiety on abu-
sive supervision in Study 2, leaders' discrete negative emotions, such
as anger, might also mediate the effects of HPWSs on abusive super-
vision (Hoobler & Hu, 2013; Mawritz, Folger, & Latham, 2014). Thus,
future research might benefit from theorizing and directly testing
more discrete affective states of leaders in response to organizations'
HR practices.
Second, although the supplementary analyses in Study 1 repli-
cated the positive consequences of HPWSs as widely demonstrated
in prior studies, we did not integrate our analyses of the positive and
negative effects of HPWSs into a comprehensive framework. Thus,
we encourage future research to take this more integrative approach
and develop a better understanding of when HPWSs are most likely
to lead to positive versus negative outcomes. This could involve, for
example, a more nuanced examination of the specific HR practices
that are typically bundled together in the HPWS framework, with a
focus on which are more likely to lead to positive versus negative out-
comes, and the types of employees most likely to experience these
outcomes.
Third, although our work studied both the mechanisms and bound-
ary conditions of HPWSs' effects on abusive supervision, we did not
integrate our analysis of HPWSs with previously identified cross-level
drivers of abusive supervision, such as organizations' climates for hos-
tility and procedural fairness (Mawritz, Dust, & Resick, 2014; Restubog
et al., 2011; Tepper et al., 2006). It is unclear, therefore, how HPWSs
might interact with these contextual factors. For example, factors such
as a hostile climate could be theorized to accentuate the negative
effects of HPWSs by deepening leaders' anxieties (Mawritz, Dust, &
Resick, 2014). Conversely, organizational policies and training programs
that facilitate line leaders' HR management (HRM) involvement
(Kehoe & Han, 2020) could be theorized to mitigate HPWSs' negative
effects. For organizations seeking to maximize HPWSs' upsides while
minimizing their downsides, such examinations could be impactful.
Fourth, in Study 2, we asked supervisors to rate their abusive
behavior toward the employee they interact most often with and then
recall and rate the performance of that employee. A problem with this
approach is that supervisors might justify their abusive behavior by
adjusting the performance rating of that employee so that it corre-
sponds with their abusive behavior. For example, they might provide
lower performance ratings to an employee whom they abused in
order to justify their inappropriate behaviors.
A final limitation of our research is that we did not examine
the positive consequences of workplace anxiety (Cheng &
106
McCarthy, 2018). Indeed, TWA notes that anxiety can have positive
effects on employees such as improved job performance, suggesting
that as with HPWSs, it is important to adopt a nuanced perspective
on workplace anxiety. Relatedly, although our research focused on
employee performance as a boundary condition of the anxiety–abuse
relationship, future research would benefit from exploring a wider
range of moderating factors, such as individual ability, motivation, and
emotional intelligence (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018). In a similar vein,
future research might consider leaders' individual differences such as
self-efficacy (Bandura, 1982) that predict leaders' capacities to cope
with the strain associated with HPWS implementation, consider
structural changes that can make new systems easier to adapt to, or
examine the benefits of social support.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank Editor Dr. Mark Bolino and two anonymous
reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments. This
research was supported by grants from the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (71832007, 71822203, 71802106).
DATA AVAI LAB ILITY S TATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the
corresponding author upon reasonable request.
ORCID
Meng Xi https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9321-8129
ENDNOTES
1
These intervals were created to mirror the firms' existing employee per-
formance evaluation systems. We obtained this information by inter-
viewing HR directors ahead of our data collection. As a robustness
check, we also asked employees to self-report their performance using
an established five-item scale (Tsui et al., 1997). A sample item was
“Compared to your colleagues in your team, how is your quantity of
work?” (1 = far below average to 7 = far above average; α = .94). All
hypotheses were supported when employee self-reported job perfor-
mance was used (detailed results are available from the first author upon
request).
2 ment Journal, 58, 763–788. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2014.0170
To ensure that our results were not unduly affected by the inclusion of
our control variables, we reran all analyses without the inclusion of con-
trols. All research hypotheses were supported without adding these
controls. The associated analyses are available from the first author upon
request.
3 Cheng, B. H., & McCarthy, J. M. (2018). Understanding the dark and bright
We standardized all variables before entering the regression for better
interpretation of the results.
4
We thank an anonymous reviewer for providing these suggestions.
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2076
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Meng Xi (ximeng16@126.com) is an assistant researcher at School
of Business, Nanjing University, P.R. China. He received his PhD
in management from Nanjing University, China. His primary
research interests focus on employment relations, leadership,
well-being, and strategic human resource management.
Wei He (whe@nju.edu.cn) is an associate professor of manage-
ment at the School of Business, Nanjing University, China. He
received his PhD in business administration from Huazhong Uni-
versity of Science and Technology, China. His research interests
include compensation, leadership, employee organizational citi-
zenship behavior, and workplace deviance.
Ryan Fehr (rfehr@uw.edu) is an associate professor of manage-
ment at the Foster School of Business, University of Washington,
USA. He received his PhD in University of Maryland, College Park,
USA. His research interests include positive organizational schol-
arship, ethics and morality, and leadership.
Shuming Zhao (zhaosm@nju.edu.cn) is Nanjing University senior
professor, Honorary Dean of the School of Business, and Dean of
Xingzhi College, Nanjing University. He received his PhD in man-
agement from Claremont Graduate University in California, USA.
His research interests include human resource management, man-
ager's competence, and multinational business management.
How to cite this article: Xi, M., He, W., Fehr, R., & Zhao, S.
(2022). Feeling anxious and abusing low performers: A
multilevel model of high performance work systems and
abusive supervision. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 43(1),
91–111. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2558
110 XI ET AL.

APPENDIX A

TABLE A1 Results of hierarchical regression analysis for leader workplace anxiety and perceived abusive supervision in Study 1

Leader workplace anxiety Perceived abusive supervision

Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6

Control variables
Employee gender (L1) .28* .26* .25*
Employee age (L1) .01 .01 .01
Employee education (L1)
.06
.07
.07
Tenure duration (L1) .00 .00 .00
Leader gender (L2) .38 .30 .32 .05
.00 .00
Leader education (L2)
.01 .00
.05 .07 .07 .07
Firm ownership (L3)
.23
.26
.21
.08
.06
.06
Firm industry (L3)
.71
.61*
.32 .02 .11 .12
Firm size (L3) .31 .23 .39
.22
.28
.28
Firm age (L3) .02*** .02*** .02** .00 .00 .00
Independent variables
Leader workplace anxiety (L2) .13* .13*
Employee job performance (L2)
.09***
Anxiety  Job performance (L2  L1)
.07***
Leader-rated HPWSs (L3) .35** .34** .20* .16 .16
Leader job experience (L2)
.26
.17
.09
.08
HPWSs  Job experience (L3  L2)
.28* .08 .14* .14*
2
Pseudo R .04 .11 .19 .04 .06 .08
Δ Pseudo R2 .04 .07 .08 .04 .02 .02

Note: N = 508 at the individual level (L1), N = 81 at the department level (L2), and N = 24 at the firm level (L3).
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

TABLE A2 Bootstrap estimation of Monte Carlo confidence intervals for conditional indirect effects in Study 1

Moderators
Indirect effect (Leader-rated HPWSs ! Leader
Leader job experience Employee job performance workplace anxiety ! Abusive supervision) 95% CI
Low (mean
SD) Low (1 SD below mean) .12 [.06, .82]
High (1 SD above mean) .04 [
.20, .28]
High (mean + SD) Low (1 SD below mean) .01 [
.60, .08]
High (1 SD above mean) .004 [
.20, .13]
XI ET AL. 111

TABLE A3 Results of hierarchical regression analysis for employee job autonomy and job satisfaction in Study 1

Employee job autonomy Employee job satisfaction

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Variables Estimate SE T Estimate SE T Estimate SE T

Control variables
Employee gender (L1)
.15 .10 .14 .03 .11 .82 .07 .10 .46
Employee age (L1) .01 .05 .77
.00 .06 .94
.01 .05 .83
Employee education (L1) .03 .09 .75
.06 .08 .47
.06 .07 .38
Tenure duration (L1) .00 .00 .75
.00 .00 .55
.00 .00 .53
Leader gender (L2)
.03 .17 .86 .17 .18 .33 .16 .18 .38
Leader education (L2) .02 .07 .74
.06 .08 .41
.07 .08 .41
Leader tenure (L2) .06* .03 .03 .07* .03 .02 .07* .03 02
Firm ownership (L3)
.03 .13 .84
.10 .21 .74
.10 .22 .66
Firm industry (L3) .21 .19 .28
.11 .24 .66
.10 .24 .67
Firm size (L3) .30 .17 .11 .22 .21 .31 .22 .20 .29
Firm age (L3)
.00 .00 .67
.01*** .00 .00
.01* .00 .00
Independent variables
Firm HPWSs (L3) .19* .08 .03 .28** .08 .00 .27* .08 .00
Employee job autonomy (L1) .46*** .08 .00
2
Pseudo R .04 .08 .22
Δ Pseudo R2 .02 .03 .14

Note: N = 508 at the individual level (L1), N = 81 at the department level (L2), and N = 24 at the firm level (L3).
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

HPWSs scale 4. Our employees receive their performance appraisals which are
used to determine their compensation.
Skill-enhancing 5. Our company provides above-market wage levels to attract
and retain employees.
1. Our employees are administered an employment test (e.g., skills 6. Our company establishes a clear career path for employees.
tests) prior to hiring. 7. Our employees are organized in work teams in performing a
2. Our employees are provided a formal job analysis to identify major part of their work roles.
their position requirements (such as required knowledge, skills, or
abilities).
3. Our employees receive continuous training, for example, con- Opportunity-enhancing
tinuous professional development.
4. Our employees receive formal performance appraisals to help 1. Our employees are included in a formal information sharing
them promote skill development and achieve better performance program (e.g., a newsletter).
goals. 2. Our employees are asked to complete attitude surveys on a
regular basis.
3. Our employees are encouraged to provide constructive sugges-
Motivation-enhancing tions to improve their work.
4. Our employees have access to a formal grievance procedure
1. Our employees are offered training courses to help them obtain and/or complaint resolution system.
internal promotions.
2. Our employees receive formal individual performance
appraisals.
3. Our employees have access to company incentive plans, profit-
sharing plans, and/or gainsharing plans.
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Copyright of Journal of Organizational Behavior (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) is the property of
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or
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may print, download, or email articles for individual use.